


Like A Beating Heart

by voleuse



Category: The Princess Bride
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-09
Updated: 2005-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-04 10:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Waiting hurts, and may take more than a season</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Beating Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Set early in the narrative. Title and summary adapted from Rachel Wetzsteon's _Chasing Spring_.

He holds Buttercup's face in his hands and revels in her smile.

If he considers her objectively, he knows she isn't so beautiful. Lovely enough, he supposes, but the oceans are wide and navigable. Surely there is a more beautiful woman somewhere.

But then, she whispers his name, turns her face to place a kiss against his palm.

Then, he remembers she's the most beautiful woman in the world.

*

 

The way she speaks his name fascinates him. First hesitant, then proud, then breathless. Their entire relationship, in the arc of a gasp.

She lives solely in the present, his Buttercup. It's why she can never quite apologize for the way she treated him, before. She doesn't see how it matters, if she loves him now.

Westley, on the other hand, can't help but cast his thoughts about. He doesn't dwell on that endless waiting, but instead plots out the future. What she will need, what they will need together.

The country is restless, he knows. At the market, goods are becoming scarce and expensive. The butcher is sending his finest wares to the palace, and there is no silk to be had at any price.

He tries to tell Buttercup about this, because he thinks their farm might come to penury if the trend continues as he predicts.

But she shakes her head, because they have food to eat, clothes to wear, beds to sleep in.

He frowns at her dismissal, so she draws him to her, upon the grass.

And he forgets to think of anything but now.

*

 

Buttercup braids flowers into her hair. Twists of white and yellow and green, entangled in gold and caramel.

"I will have to leave," he whispers against her neck. "Seek my fortune elsewhere."

She pouts, clutches his hands to her. "We have everything we need."

"Need, yes." He extricates his fingers from her embrace, plucks petals from her hair. "But you deserve more."

"Westley," she pleads, and as always, he shivers at the use of his name. "Westley," she says again, and then against his lips.

Afterwards, he runs a hand up her side, down her shoulder.

He wants her to drape her in lace and silk and diamonds, and show the world how she improves them.

She looks at him with sadness in her eyes, and asks him to promise not to die.

*

 

The weeks pass, and he finds passage on a ship. He stands on the deck, stares back at land, instead of into the horizon.

The ocean rocks unsteadily under his feet, and he wills his body to learn the rhythm. The sky is gray and the water is black, and he misses the vibrant green of the farm's meadows.

He closes his eyes, and thinks of Buttercup's smile.


End file.
